How the university works: higher education and the low-wage nation Bousquet, Marc

Table of Contents:


1 Introduction: Your Problem Is My Problem 1

2 The Informal Economy of the “Information University” 55

3 The Faculty Organize, But Management Enjoys Solidarity 90

4 Students Are Already Workers 125

5 Composition as Management Science 157

6 The Rhetoric of “Job Market” and the Reality of the Academic Labor System 186

Appendix A: Yeshiva University 444 US 672,

“Justice Brennan, Dissenting” 211

Appendix B: Brown University 1-RC-21368,

“Liebman and Walsh, Dissenting” 224

As much as we think we know about the modern university, very little has been said about what it's like to work there. Instead of the high-wage, high-profit world of knowledge work, most campus employees—including the vast majority of faculty—really work in the low-wage, low-profit sphere of the service economy. Tenure-track positions are at an all-time low, with adjuncts and graduate students teaching the majority of courses. This super-exploited corps of disposable workers commonly earn fewer than $16,000 annually, without benefits, teaching as many as eight classes per year. Even undergraduates are being exploited as a low-cost, disposable workforce.

Marc Bousquet, a major figure in the academic labor movement, exposes the seamy underbelly of higher education—a world where faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates work long hours for fast-food wages. Assessing the costs of higher education’s corporatization on faculty and students at every level, How the University Works is urgent reading for anyone interested in the fate of the university.

(http://nyupress.org/books/9780814799758/)